Wikipedia started with an impossible idea: to build a free encyclopedia for and by the world. Almost two decades later, we’ve made some serious progress. Nearly 300 languages, more than 45 million articles, hundreds of millions of monthly readers, and millions of contributors over the years.

People like you keep Wikipedia accurate and unbiased.

Edit by edit, Wikipedia continuously grows and evolves over time. Volunteers collaborate openly to check each other’s work and ensure accuracy. For content to remain on Wikipedia, it must be written from a neutral point of view and attributed to a reliable source, so readers can verify the facts. Bots and monitoring tools help ensure articles meet these standards. Most editors act in good faith, but if anyone makes intentionally disruptive or malicious changes, the community will find these and fix them as quickly as possible.

If you notice an inaccuracy, you can request a correction on that article’s talk page. See an example of this on the ProPublica Talk page. We don’t edit or create content. That is all up to the volunteer community.

Creating content about oneself or one’s company is considered a conflict of interest

Most of our projects discourage creating or editing articles about yourself and organizations in which you have a vested interest. This includes campaigns, products, and services you may be involved in.

Owners, employees, and contractors of a business are considered paid editors and are required by the Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use and by the Wikipedia paid editing disclosure policy to disclose their paid status, employer, and other relevant affiliations if they engage in paid editing. Here’s more information about Wikipedia’s conflict of interest guidelines.

Wikipedia will never run ads

Wikipedia is devoted to free, reliable, and neutral knowledge. We are not against online advertising, but we will not run ads on Wikipedia. Commercial interests could jeopardize Wikipedia’s position as a neutral source of information.

All the text and most media on Wikipedia articles can be reused

You can generally use text from a Wikipedia article in your own book, article, or website, but you must comply with the appropriate license. Wikipedia’s text content can be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license (CC-BY-SA); unless otherwise indicated, it can also be used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Read more about reusing Wikipedia content.

Most of the images on Wikipedia are either in the public domain or published under a Creative Commons copyright license that allows them to be reused free of charge. The copyright information for each image is available if you click on it. Before re-using a media file, be sure to review this information.